Philly Future

March 31, 2006

Today is the final day to donate to Chuck Pennacchio's Senate campaign for this fiscal quarter. All of the grassroots groups all over the state are wonderful, but it's quite rewarding to be able to have the actual candidate go out and campaign with them, but that takes money. Gas money. Food money. Literature money...

Chuck Pennacchio decided long ago to not accept PAC money so that he would only be accountable to his constituents instead of special and corporate interest groups. The money going to his campaign goes straight Chuck's efforts as the entire staff is volunteer [myslef included]. There are no consultant fees, the campaign is truly about Chuck and not formed through needless focus groups to feel out issues. The money donated by individuals go towards sending Chuck across the state [he's been to ~300 events since the 2004 election], billboards [like the one pictured above], radio spots [coming soon!] and campaign material like buttons, flyers, posters, etc...

$5 is an extra couple gallons of gas for the car to get Chuck to that next town down the road. $25 pays for reams of paper for literature drops while canvassing. $100 helps pay for plane tickets across the state when time is short. Every little bit helps and goes a long way.

Today is Air America Radio's second anniversary. I've been listening for it all along the way. I was so thrilled on launch day, I was out in my car during my lunch break to catch it for half an hour. I vividly remember Randi Rhodes rip into Ralph Nader resulting in him hanging up on her live on the air.

As much as fathead Limbaugh and bully O'Lielly want them off the air, they aren't going anywhere. They have over eighty stations across the US including XM Satellite Radio and growing.

Here's to them and here's to hoping they'll be back on the radio dial here in Philly soon. Until then, I'll be listening via their stream online.

Brian Russell of Audio Activism down in North Carolina forwarded me some info on a case in NC about a man on trial to be executed May 12th, Jerry Connor. He was found guilty of murder and rape more than a decade ago. But DNA testing has improved since 1991 [when the original FBI tests were conducted in this case] and additionally

The SBI [State Bureau of Investigation] agent in charge of handling, preparing and transmitting the 1991 DNA to the FBI was Brenda Bissette, an agent who was forced to resign from the SBI lab for mishandling DNA evidence in up to 50 cases. Although the SBI has agreed to conduct re-testing in
"any case that Bissette handled," the State is opposing Mr. Conner’s request.

According to this post on the blog keeping tabs on the defense case of Connor.

The blog recounts how Connor's confession was taken at the time of arrest under threats of the death penalty, I'm guessing implying that if he confessed, he wouldn't be killed.

The most recent post states that the judge sided with the District Attorney's request to deny additional DNA testing without discussion in open court. This single test could prove his innocence. Or, if positive, it would serve as the final strike and the state could go ahead with the execution with a more solid legal grounding with a more conclusive and technologically sound DNA test. Me, I'm against capital punishment altogether.

Brian knows and trusts one of the attorneys working on Connor's case. I know and trust Brian.

The Innocence Project is an organization which has found 175 cases overturned as of March 31, 2006. It does not seem they are involved in this case, but I immediately thought of them while reading about Connor. What they're about.

The condos going up at 1352 South St are well on their way from this shot from January 20th. The windows are huuuge. They're lofts. It's gonna look nice. Only five floors tall when it's going to be done.

I can't remember what used to be in that lot now. Whether it was empty since we moved east of Broad about six months ago or what.

So I wiped my harddrive and have re-installed everything I need again. One notable thing that I am going without this time around is the MS Office suite. I have the CD for the old XP version and the newer 2003 version. Instead, I'm going it the open source OpenOffice route. It is almost fully compatible with the full MS Office suite and it is free free free. Not having the MS Office suite on the HDD really frees up a shitload of space. It really is a hog.

March 30, 2006

I was contacted by Schmap!! a couple days ago about usage of some of my photos of Philadelphia. Schmap!! is a company that makes these downloadable travel/city guides that are searchable and printable complete with photos of locations. I downloaded the NYC guide and fooled around for a bit. Pretty cool.

The photos are displayed in the top right. If there is more than one shot, it continues through a looping slideshow. And if you click on the photo[s] you are taken to the flickr page where that photo resides - pretty cool. The flickr api has been getting some pretty cool uses, just like Google's. But actually, this could just simply be some hard coding of links.

No money for this, but I just think it's pretty cool. They asked for nineteen of my shots of Rittenhouse Square, 76ers games, Love Park, restaurants and other locations around town. And according to this thread on the Philadelphia flickr discussion forum, many others have been contacted as well. Cool.

On second thought, maybe harassment is too strong a word. I was accosted and chided perhaps. But completely without provocation this morning on my way to work.

There I was in a half asleep daze at 34th St station. Why was I at 34th St station? Because in my half asleep haze I got on the A train instead of the B train on the El from City Hall; had to get off or else I'd miss my stop. So I was just standing there staring off into the nothingness that is 34th St station when a SEPTA cop walks up to me and says something. I was half asleep, so I didn't hear him so I turned to face him and said "What?" [paraphrased] He repeated, "You know you're not allowed to take pictures down here" while pointing to my camera hung across my body. I woke up pretty quickly after he said that. I said back that I wasn't taking photos and that I wasn't aware that there were any rules against taking photos down there. He replied that "Techinically, SEPTA is private property and that you need to contact the press/public relations department to get a permit to be able to shoot" to which I replied that I had read otherwise and that such a regulation has never been shown to me in print. His radio was squaking away and he repeated something and then walked away.

To the best of my knowledge, there are NO regulations as to whether or not one is allowed to take photos on SEPTA. I know that they tried to get some law on the books in NYC for the subways, but it never got that far after some incredible public outcry. People have been taking photos on trains for decades. It's part of the essence of street photography.

And we all know that this stupid "rule" is to "stop terrorism" - yeah, that fucking works. Riiiiight. Are people not allowed to take photos of the White House? How about Ground Zero? And what about the Liberty Bell? The Washington Monument? Those are all likely terrorist targets right? Or so we're lead to believe by Big Brother.

What a fucking crock of fucking bull fucking shit. Fuck off SEPTA. The 1/100 of a percent of people you "catch" taking photos of the dirty, dingy, disgusting subway system is doing a bang up job in keeping our streets safe. And other SEPTA cops have seen me taking photos and they have never had a problem with it. This guy made a judgement call on someone who wasn't breaking the "rule" [which, as far as I know, is non-existant] he was trying to enforce.

I'm not blaming the SEPTA cop for doing what he's been told to do, hey anyone can be a terrorist, right? But jeez. I don't see cops handing out tickets to every single person s/he sees jaywalking [unless you happen to be in Tempe, AZ where they do ticket every jaywalker they see].

And finally, I wasn't taking photos when the SEPTA cop approached me. I was standing there, half asleep, staring off into the tunnel. He presumed I was taking photos through my mind's eye I guess; as an artists should be doing I presume. But I wasn't. By that logic, he should've been going up to every single person down there who could have been taking photos with their mind's eye. Maybe they have a photographic memory? Encylopedia Brown sure did. A human eye sees better than a camera lens in most cases [certainly better than the lens I have on my D70 today] and can pull more detail than your average digital camera's sensor can take in. There may have been eight megapixel point and shoots with twelve time optical zoom cameras tucked in people's pockets. It seems that over 75% of cellphones come with cameras these days, those dirty digitally connected terrorists should all be numbered, no?

If he didn't start walking away, maybe I would've kept going back and forth with this guy. Demanded that he show me some kind of proof that taking photos is not allowed, especially if I was simply standing there not doing anything. It's not like this is something obviously illegal like killing someone, everyone knows that's wrong and illegal. Everytime I hear about people getting accosted about taking photos underground, it never involves any kind of proof, just a Big Brotherish mannerism that it's wrong for one BULLSHIT reason or another.

March 29, 2006

Philly Future is tallying up nominations for the bi-weekly featured blog right now through the end of the week. Voting on the finalists happens over the weeked.

Blogs that are excluded are those which have already been featured [which includes this blog]. You can find those blogs on the front page of Philly Future on the blogroll or to the left in the 'Philly Future' blogroll section.

I keep forgetting to post this because people have been asking me this in person for the last week, but it looks like I'm on the ballot.

I called up the Board of Elections and they said that if I wasn't served with papers to appear in court to defend my petition that it was not challenged and that I was indeed on the ballot.

I don't know which method City Hall employs to serve people with papers, I'm assuming certified, registered mail with return receipt or something, but I didn't get anything. Nobody in a trench coat served me with a warrant or anything either.

While rushing to wipe my HDD two nights ago, I forgot to save my damn bookmarks in Firefox. Grrr.

Stayed out way too late last night at Drinking Liberally and then off to Little Pete's for a milkshake and then to McGlinchy's for a Newcastle. I didn't get a chance to fiddle much with the computer other than get SP2 on the box. And tonight we're headed to the 76ers game v the Pistons. That could get ugly.

While I was running late on getting out the door last night, I didn't have the energy to trek back and forth across town to the various events I mentioned yesterday, but ACM went to one event I was aware of and another one I hadn't heard of and has recaps.